New 280z "Hawk" - wish me luck.

[madkaw]

Any s30 trans will work. The odd ball is the T-5 used on the turbo engine . It has unique yokes for bolting up the driveshaft . It still bolts the same to the L engine. There’s a ton of info and pics showing the different transmissions. 

[Zed Head]

55 minutes ago, smackhq said:

Not sure how many "rookie" card questions I can play??

IF...IF I considered finding a L28E engine, would that mate up to the transmission from l28et or better to get with engine? 

How to identify which transmission I have currently?

Unlimited question quotas.

Your turbo engine has all of the same bolt patterns as a non-turbo, or NA, engine.  It's the electrical and electronics that are different.  Nissanintroduced a new and different engine control system iwth the turbos, acronym ECCS.  You could remove the turbo and bolt on NA parts or carbs, while you work on and learn about Megasquirt and turbos.  Your turbo engine has lower compression than an NA engine but it will still run fine.  An option or two.

[smackhq]

18 minutes ago, Zed Head said:

Unlimited question quotas.

 Your turbo engine has all of the same bolt patterns as a non-turbo, or NA, engine.  It's the electrical and electronics that are different.  Nissanintroduced a new and different engine control system iwth the turbos, acronym ECCS.  You could remove the turbo and bolt on NA parts or carbs, while you work on and learn about Megasquirt and turbos.  Your turbo engine has lower compression than an NA engine but it will still run fine.  An option or two.

Ha "Unlimited question quotas" you may change that standing rule. ?

[smackhq]

22 minutes ago, Zed Head said:

That's Oliver, a member of the club.  He runs zspecialties.  He has a lot of parts and some are of good price but he really values others.  

http://www.zspecialties.com/

That's cool. He's in my neighborhood. $700+ is more than I was thinking an l28e would be.

Maybe I should reach out and go see him.

[Zed Head]

Actually that's pretty spendy for a used L28E.  If you're not in a hurry you can find better.  The engine in my car is from a $300 parts car that I bought mainly for the transmission.  Runs great.

You really could just use your turbo engine without the turbo until you're ready to returbo and Megasquirt it.  A distributor, an EFI harness, an ECU and some odds and ends and you'll be on the road.

[madkaw]

First off , might need to see what you have . Compression test , look under the valve cover , sniff the oil- if there’s any in there. Get a cheap borescope and look at the pistons . Maybe even pull the oil pan . It could have a blown HG for all you know. 

As far as running that combo NA- it would be doggie at best and discouraging on power at most. Yes you could use it, but a smaller chamber head would make it much better. Yes more work . Or find a cheap NA motor that’s already running and drop it in there. There’s folks v8 swapping these all the time and selling good running motors for 500$ 

[smackhq]

Some good news or let's say additional news on this Z. I know the previous owner through someone at work and was able to ask some questions, which they nicely answered.

I think there is some more good news in this. The engine was running fine before swap, clutch / flywheel new.

Here:

ZHawk questions:

1. Do you know or better yet, saw, this engine run? 

        Yes. This was taken out of a 1982 280zx and ran perfect. I drove it over the pass with no issues before it was swapped into the Z-hawk.

Did you do the swap or get car like this? 

    My buddy and I did the swap about 5 years ago before I moved away for school

Do you know if turbo had issues? 

    The turbo would get hot, but it spooled just fine and makes a decent amount of boost at the stock settings. The intercooler that my pops gave you is brand new and will just take a little bit of measuring and cutting to get the pipes to fit properly. I have another friend with a 78 280zx that put it in and works great and wasn’t hard to modify.

Intake Manifold. Much is pulled.  

    This one I can’t really answer as its been years since I’ve seen what we took off and didn’t. But we did pull most of the emissions because the plan was to delete the codes when we converted to megasquirt.

Do you know anything about the transmission?

    The tranny is the original 5 speed that came with the car. Works great, there’s no grinding, whining or difficulty getting into any of the gears. I put a new clutch in it and had the flywheel resurfaced. So the clutch only has a couple hundred miles on it.

Megasquirt.

   1. What was the driving reason for this? 

        Basically so it could be easily tuned and turn up the boost. From what we read, a lot of 280z owners moved to megasquirt.

   2. Did you do the soldering on board? 

        I did about half of it, my buddy did the other half.

   3. Was board ever tested? 

        Yes, we hooked it up to our laptop with a 9-pin db9 connector I believe. Nothing was ever programmed, however. But the computer and megasquirt program did connect to the board.

Wiring.

   1. You have 2 harnesses. Assume 1 from the 280z engine and 1 from the 280zx engine? Yes sir.

   2. Were you wiring for the Megasquirt into the 280z or 280zx harness? Plan was to wire to the zx harness, but I’ve read you can do either (not really sure on the details of this)

   3. Any notes from this? Sorry, don’t remember a lot else off the top of my head

JDM intercooler.

   1. Assume this was part of the Megasquirt upgrade to get higher boost and tunable system. Confirm? Yes Sir. See above notes

Distributor.

   1. Why do you have a rebuilt distributor?

   2. Is new oil pump shaft related to a goal and part of distributor upgrade? The new oil pump shaft is for the new distributor.

AFM was pulled. Was it pulled in prep to get Megasquirt online, which doesn’t use that system. 

    I think it was just pulled to be adjusted because it was running rich the last time a drove it, but I’m not 100% sure on this one.

 

[Captain Obvious]

Cool. My point is there would be no shame whatsoever to take five steps backwards before you take ten forward. Even if it means un-doing a lot of work that someone else has done before you. Especially if the backward steps make the future forward steps way easier.

I'm sure you'll get there eventually on either path, but I'm just thinking "easy". 

[Villeman]

+1 on the captain. by the time MS is working you will THEN track all those little evil details that will eat your next year, easily. IF you score a good deal on a 280z engine just pop it in and make the car work. Why tinker for years and then realise somethings badly wrong (has happened before, rusted out under bondo/vin problems/warped chassis etc. etc.).

Considering that you will be abled to flip the engine afterwards, this might actually be cheaper than your route. Once you KNOW what works and what needs doing you can plan and tinker properly. To put into perspective, my 280z was in an ultra good condition (virtually nothing wrong) but still the engine needed boring (see, somethings always wrong) and it still took 2 years even though every piece in the car was 100% working to start with....

and you will definitely want to drive that thing WAAAY before you finish with a MS conversion

Edited July 3, 2018 by Villeman

[Zed Head]

There you go smackhq.  There will be ten opinions for every possibility.  Some people breeze through an MS installation, some never get it done.  If you have a hoist and space an engine swap is a "pop in", if you don't then it might not even be an option.  If you have good knowledge of how engine's work, you could have a set of carbs installed in a day.  Once you know the 280Z EFI system, it can be done in a day or two also, but you have to get the right parts.

How soon do you want it to be running, how well do you want it to run, what are your capabilities, how much do you want to spend or not spend, etc.  Good luck.  Pick one and go for it.  The FMS's are great educational tools, Nissan goes in to great detail about how things work.  The Engine Fuel chapters and Engine Mechanical are worth reading even if you stick with Megasquirt.  You can download them from the Resources section.

[madkaw]

If you decide to jump right in doing the Megasquirt I would HIGHLY recommend you send that unit off to an experienced guy to have it checked. I would be very cautious of a unit that has had several hands in assembling . If you go to Hybridz in the vendors section and look up Softopz , he would be the guy to get with. I would send the unit to him and have it checked. He could also get you miles ahead by putting you a harness together using your unit. This will save you months of studying and frustration . He would also load you a tune so you don’t have to figure that out either. I have a thread over there in the Megasquirt section on an install I did. You need to save yourself frustration somewhere or you will be wanting to give up early .

The Megasquirt system does simplify the whole system, but the learning curve is steep if your not up in your EFI. It allows cheaper , more modern sensors . Since your starting from ground zero with the wiring I would go with the premade harness from Softopz. It’s very resonabily priced.

It sounds like you got some positive responses to your questions from the PO. 

Edited July 3, 2018 by madkaw

[Patcon]

4 hours ago, madkaw said:

If you decide to jump right in doing the Megasquirt I would HIGHLY recommend you send that unit off to an experienced guy to have it checked. I would be very cautious of a unit that has had several hands in assembling . If you go to Hybridz in the vendors section and look up Softopz , he would be the guy to get with. I would send the unit to him and have it checked. He could also get you miles ahead by putting you a harness together using your unit. This will save you months of studying and frustration . He would also load you a tune so you don’t have to figure that out either. I have a thread over there in the Megasquirt section on an install I did. You need to save yourself frustration somewhere or you will be wanting to give up early .

I agree with this 100%. In your shoes I would do this before I pulled the engine and swapped it. You would have the ECU, the wiring and the harness complete. It greatly reduces the places you could have issues. If the car ran good before, you would hope the hill wouldn't be that steep with this kind of a leg up!